12.31.10: new year’s eve (Boston, food fests and stomach bugs).

Roasted Pepper, Tomato and Anchovy Pizza

It started out so well: despite being stuck in traffic as we edged out of New York on Thursday morning on the Bolt Bus, we arrived in Boston only an hour late, and we knocked out most of our shopping for Friday night’s dinner at the Trader Joe’s in Cambridge. The plan was to then go out for dinner that night and then meet up with some of our hosts’ friends at a speakeasy (i.e. a lounge without a sign in which we had to wait 15 minutes to enter that’s become a thing in Boston). Everything was seemingly going to plan: dinner was great, the drinks were delicious–Drink is one of those places where you sip on drinks gingerly and slowly–and we went back to Somerville/Medford in good spirits. There may have been a little late-night snacking, but nothing too out of the ordinary.

Things took an unfortunate turn the next morning for yours truly: the workings of a 24-hour bug that started in things not mentioning, necessary naps and my face flush with fever as the day wore on. Oh, and no appetite.

A rye-based Negroni (at Drink on Thursday night). I just really liked this picture.

I didn’t want to let my irritation show during our time with K and T, but I was not pleased that I had caught something that robbed me of my appetite, but at least Michael was there to handle the food preparation and the verdict by our hosts was that the food was pretty damn good…so at least everyone else was able to have a good time. I managed to stay up until around 11, fell asleep until right before midnight, then had to drag Michael’s bum up to our room because he had passed out in the midst of making fun of Carson Daly around 12:30.

Obligatory enormous bowl of guacamole!

But onto the food, of course. An incredible deal at Stop & Shop (10 avocados for $10…but then only ringing up as $2 on the handheld scanner) meant that a huge mess of guacamole had to be made, and Michael did not disappoint with the giant blue bowl filled with green goodness. It was the perfect accompaniment to a good hour of Jersey Shore reruns prior to the real festivities, and while I think our hosts thought that there might be a little leftover before the night was over (six avocados were used in the execution of this dip, after all) absolutely all of it was scraped up with the white corn tortilla chips that Michael and K picked up that morning at the store.

This picture doesn’t do it justice, but that bowl was filled with guacamole. I credit the quick decimation to the fact that we had only eaten bagels all day until this point.

I’d say that the flagship meal of the evening was a recipe I noticed in the Rome cookbook we received as a Christmas gift. There wasn’t much to this dish: roasted yellow peppers (the reds didn’t look good), grape tomatoes and anchovies submerged in a layer of mozzarella cheese. Because we were traveling, me making our dough wasn’t terribly feasible, so we depended on what the local stores had in stock, and Trader Joe’s herb and garlic dough served our purposes well. I could only eat a slice of it (blasphemous, I tell you!) but it was eaten up by the end of the evening, so all in all…a solid hit that we’ll be making again with our own dough.

Open-face Croque Monsieurs

The last course of the evening was one that I had to abstain from, but from the fact that it distracted my friends from the first half-hour of the MTV New Year’s special (OK, so all they missed were a lot of jokes that fell flat and some decent jabs at the Jersey Shore cast’s expense), but then again, I would be distracted by open-faced sandwiches of ham and Gruyère cheese if I wasn’t drifting in and out of consciousness.

Stomach issues aside, it was a pretty spectacular evening: lots of Rock Band being played, lots of cuddle time with Sam Atoms their cat, and lots of “that’s what she said/he said” jokes–in other words, a pretty stellar way to spend New Year’s Eve.

We were in the same boat my friend. P and I went to my favorite restaurant, Back Forty, in the city…he paid $96 each, and I started to feel like crap (stomach bug too) and we were back at his place in Yonkers by 11:45pm. We watched the ball drop on TV, I took a therapeutic 45 minute shower and I was crankily trying to sleep by 1am. Other friends in Brooklyn were sick too. OMG…what does this say about all of our years to come ;)